Trouserwatch 1

Last summer, Burberry's CEO stood to trouser annual pay of £28m.
Burberry's remuneration committee had also signed off a staggering
£400,000 clothing allowance. Presumably he needed enormous trousers
with especially capacious pockets.

But, in a triumph of outrage, the Burberry shareholders rejected
the proposed package.

Rarely does a big company's shareholders challenge their CEO's
pay packet. It's bad for business. In fact, only five times in the
previous fifteen years had a FTSE 100 company provoked such
dissent, despite larger and larger bonuses.

British boards' remuneration proposals have become a corporate
equivalent of The Bollocks Game. You know the one. Where schoolkids
shout "bollocks" as loud as they can without a teacher's rebuke.
Boards simply push pay as far as they can without a shareholders'
protest.

For the most part, no-one protests. And executives walk away
with a trouserload of cash.

That's why we have started Trouserwatch.

In our next blog, we'll explain how executive pay has soared
out of control. It's a stitch-up. And two things in particular are
to blame.